In healthcare facilities, e.g., hospitals, medical products prescribed to patients may be temporarily stored in medication-dispensing units. Typically, a healthcare facility has one or more medication-dispensing units located on each floor and/or nursing station of the healthcare facility for storing medical products prescribed to patients on that floor. Each of the medication-dispensing units may include lockable storage compartments to limit access of the medical products contained therein to authorized healthcare workers. Controlled substances, such as morphine, may be segregated into individual storage compartments in a medication-dispensing unit to control access to these substances.
A healthcare worker, e.g., nurse, may log onto a medication-dispensing unit before administering medical products to patients. In order to authenticate the healthcare worker logging on, the dispensing unit may require the healthcare worker to scan an identification badge. Alternatively, the healthcare worker may gain access to the medical products in the dispensing unit with an electronic or manual key. Once logged on, the healthcare worker may pull up a list of patients assigned to him or her, including the medical products to be administered to the patients. The healthcare worker may then remove the medical products identified in the list of patients from the dispensing unit. In a further alternative, the dispensing unit may automatically grant the healthcare worker access to one or more individual storage compartments including medical products.
The inventory of medical products in a medication-dispensing unit may be monitored manually by requiring healthcare workers logged onto the dispensing unit to perform inventory checks of medical products in the dispensing unit, e.g., by counting the quantities of the medical products in the dispensing unit. The healthcare workers may then manually report their inventory checks to the dispensing unit, e.g., by entering inventory counts into the dispensing unit with a keypad or other input device. The healthcare workers may perform the manual inventory checks before and/or after removing medical products from the dispensing unit.
One problem with a manual approach for monitoring the inventory of medical products in a dispensing unit is that it relies on the accuracy of healthcare workers to manually check and report the inventory of medical products in the dispensing unit, which introduces human error. Another problem with a manual approach is that it may not prevent a dishonest healthcare worker from removing one or more unauthorized medical products, e.g., a controlled substance, from the dispensing unit. When this occurs, an unauthorized removal of a medical product may not be detected until another healthcare worker performs an inventory check of the medical product in the dispensing unit and detects a discrepancy. In this case, the healthcare worker detecting the discrepancy may report it to a healthcare administrator so that the administrator may investigate the discrepancy, e.g., by tracking down all of the healthcare workers that have logged onto the dispensing unit within a certain period of time. A problem with this approach is that a few days may pass before the unauthorized removal is detected, making it difficult to track down all of the healthcare workers. This may be especially troublesome if some of the healthcare workers are roaming nurses who only occasionally visit the healthcare facility in question.
Accordingly, automated systems and methods for tracking and/or monitoring removing medical products from a medication-dispensing unit would be considered useful.